“Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
-Matthew 17:20

Apart from my family, faith, and economics, physical fitness is incredibly important to me.

I love watching strongmen competitions. Apart from witnessing the absolute peak of human strength, what I love most about the competitions themselves is that they are so objective, and not subjective. What I mean is, the contestants aren’t judged on their physique, how “manly” they look, or how much of a comic book caricature they have made themselves out to be. They are judged on how many times they can dead lift two Ford Pintos, or how fast they can pull a train car for a fixed distance.

“Sorry, Sven from Sweden, you did a great job pressing that log over your head 9 times, but Olafur from Iceland did it 12 times.”

It separates true strength, from the illusion of strength; the guys in the gym who spend more time talking about their Paleo diet, or asking you, “Yo, how much do you bench,” than actually working to increase their own lifts.

I find that it parallels faith closely, the idea of true faith, versus the illusion of faith.

True faith won’t ask you, “Hey bro, how many hours of adoration did you go to?” True faith won’t sing the loudest so that others can hear how well they know the hymns, or receive the Eucharist it be seen engaging in the Sacrament. True faith won’t talk about not casting the first stone out of one side of their mouth, while condemning our brothers and sisters of different religions, creeds, and sexual orientations out of the other.

True faith doesn’t talk about what a good Christian does, true faith does Christ’s work.

I firmly believe the biggest threat to Christianity today is not Islam, secularism, or relativism. The biggest threat to Christians today are Christians ourselves. When we focus too much on projecting an illusion of our faith, rather than acting out our faith.

A few months ago I was at a men’s conference at my church, and we had an hour for reflection. I went down to the Truckee river and watched the water flow. I mused to myself that if I had true faith, I mean real true faith, I could walk out into the surface if the water like St Peter and not plunge below the surface. But I didn’t dare test it, because I know that I have a long way to go to have true faith. Like true strength, true faith is a journey. It’s not something that is miraculously granted overnight. It’s something you work on every minute, every hour, every day. It’s waking up in the morning with the purposeful intent, with a prayer on your lips, surrendering yourself, abandoning your whole being to God’s will.

The illusion of strength will ask how much you can lift, bro. True strength will walk over to the bar and lift.

The illusion of faith will talk about a love for Christ. True faith will show it.